squidpants

so call me a hipster, but I saw the Arcade Fire yesterday at the sold-out 930 Club, and they were excellent, they lived up to the hype completely (they are supposedly the most-blogged about band of the year). There were about 10 people on stage, and they were energetic and occasionally cheesy in an endearing way, doing overly dramatic movements and stuff like that. I went with Rae, who thankfully had an extra ticket, since it sold out long ago. (Rae's blog post on the band was linked from DCist too, so she's famous now.)

I enjoyed all the songs, even the ones I hadn't heard, which was most of them. It seemed like the crowd was younger, high school to college age, but we stood on the upper end area almost over the stage and got a great view. My favorite part of the show was when two of the guys put on motorcycle helmets and started drumming on each other and everything around them, it kind of reminded me of Daft Punk. Really they entire band are all good performers, so it was pretty impressive. I could watch any of them at any time during the show and be entertained.

The opening act was pretty awesome too, it was called Final Fantasy (I assume like the video game). It was only one guy, one of the violinists from the Arcade Fire, and basically it just him and a violin. It was pretty interesting though, he'd record himself playing, plucking, or thumping the violin, then loop whatever he just recorded, then record some more stuff, loop that, and so on, building up a wall of sound, and then he'd sing over it. I couldn't understand most of his lyrics, but the music was awesome and I immediately went to buy a CD, but unfortunately he only made a limited number and they sold out.

The aforementioned Rae has links to mp3s and photos she took of both bands, and I'll post some of mine soon.